Marshmallow
by Lycan-Song
Summary: Demyx has befriended everyone in the Organisation who won't kill him, but there's still one person left to go: Zexion.
1. Chapter 1

**Marshmallow**

**A Zemyx Tribute**

**Disclaimer: I do not, never have and never will claim that any of the characters mentioned in this tribute, including the briefly-mentioned Grim Reaper, were created, inspired by, or influenced by myself. If you care to sue me, kindly look for alternatives. If you wish to give credit either mentally or physically to anyone for the characters used, please send it in your preferred manner to Square Enix and/or the Disney Corporation, two wonderful examples of the success of creative industry in improving the world in a way that has nothing to do with medicine. And now that that's out of the way, please enjoy the tribute and feel free to leave a review, even brief ones. They all give me the energy to keep writing things from my head.**

Demyx couldn't hate anyone. It wasn't just because Saix made it look so unhealthy and dangerous; it was because the six foot mullet-head physically couldn't.

That said, it wasn't like he didn't like some people more than he liked other people.

_Ooh so many "like-words", so pretty. _

Let's see: Xaldin was sanely callous (he had pinned Demyx to the ceiling eight times with his lances in the last week just because Demyx had kept trying to put ribbons in his dreadlocks), Saix was insanely feral (but with a cute little puppy-wuppy thing going on, so chibi!), the Superior was reasonably uncommentable (was that a word? Yep, sounded like one! Demyx would have to remember to write it down in his Dem Dem Dictionary later.), Axel was great (Demyx liked his hair, it was red, and that was his favourite colour along with blue, green, orange, purple and Moroccan coconut), Larxene was safely locked away inside his nightmares (she kept eating his happiness and making Demyx cry), Marluxia was about as frightening as the Grim Reaper's gay cousin could be (he wore so much make-up he looked like a demented clown sometimes), Xiggy was lots of fun (he ran away from Saix on so many occasions Demyx was convinced his cloak was full of dog biscuits), Luxord spent too much time on the roof (men had a shed, Luxord had a roof), Vexen didn't let him into his lab anymore (too many "Level 8 alerts", "Level 5 catastrophes" and "biohazard! Don't breathe that you idiot!"s) and Lexaeus was as talkative as a walkie-talkie without batteries and no-one on the other end.

And so that only left Zexion.

Zexion, Zexion, Zexion, his name rhymed with... nothing. This annoyed Demyx, because Demyx's name rhymed with lots of things: Flemyx, Glemyx, Tyrannosaurus Remex, Mokiaklemix, lots of stuff!

Still, despite the atrociousessyness (another great word for his dictionary!) of his name, Demyx still wanted to be friends with him. It was just the way he was. Demyx didn't know why he always wanted to be friends with everyone; he would even be friends with an enemy as long as they didn't say anything too nasty like... that Demyx didn't have a heart or something. Because they did have hearts! Of course they did! And if Demyx knew anything about biology- and he didn't- he knew you had to have a heart to feel happy, and he did feel happy sometimes! Lots of times! Usually when he was running along the walls on a sugar rush, but still very happy!

Where was Demyx's mind going with this...?

Let's see, first he was thinking about... something. Okay, start at the end and work back, don't start at the beginning, it was too long ago.

The last thing he was thinking about was running along walls, then candy, then happiness, then hearts, then friends, then things which rhymed with names, then his own name, then Zexion's name.

ZEXION! Of course! That's why Demyx was currently in a library!

And so Demyx was indeed in the library of the Castle Which Never Was. He had often heard about places such as this, rooms full of books without pictures where people could read thousands of pages in dim silence without ever seeing the joys of a Xigbar-Saix dogfight... or sunlight. Frankly none of this appealed to Demyx, but it did to Zexion and Demyx wanted to spend some time with the little itsy-bitsy spider of the Organisation. Maybe he shouldn't call Zexion a spider when he saw him, spiders were cute but most people didn't seem to think so. Larxene hadn't liked being called a spider. She had explained that she had eight kunai, not eight eyes. Counting the number of kunai she had thrown into him had been the most painful maths lesson Demyx had ever had.

Anyway, after several minutes of searching through the various antechambers, Demyx at last found Zexion writing down things out of a scarily thick-looking book at one of the tables that were scattered throughout the echoing rooms of the sanctuary, an expensive looking green-shaded lamp providing lots of light to the dark red oak of the table's surface on which a steaming cup of tea in easy arm distance to the smallest member of Organisation XIII had been carefully placed on a matching coaster.


	2. Chapter 2

"Hey Zexy!" Demyx said, throwing himself down into the chair beside the pygmy emo who stopped writing to just sit and grip his pen more tightly, his precious silence shattered.

"Do you mind if I hang out with you for a while, Zexy?" Demyx asked, rummaging around in the rucksack he'd brought with him without waiting for a reply.

"Yes," came the rather testy reply from the teeny-tiny emo, something Demyx's brain decided to take as a "no".

"Do you mind if I call you "Zexy"?"

"Yes."

"You want a gummi bear?" Demyx offered, pulling a big bag from his rucksack and ripping it open loudly enough to make the emo beside him twitch.

"No."

"Okay, Zexy!" Demyx said loudly and happily, grabbing six and dropping them into his mouth.

After a few moments of blissful munching, Demyx looked over at the once-again writing Zexion.

"What'cha doing, Zexy?"

"Taking down some quotes from my favourite books."

"Why?"

"I plan to write them on the walls of my bedroom."

"Why?"

Zexion set down the pen again and looked at Demyx.

"Don't you want to go find a book or something?"

"Nope!"

"Then why did you come to a library?"

Demyx was about to answer when he reconsidered using the truth. From what he'd heard about Zexion, the boy would probably translate him being the last person Demyx had to properly meet as that he was bottom of the list in Demyx's priorities. Which to be fair, he kinda was since he himself had made no previous attempt to get to know Demyx. How could you rank someone highly you'd only ever heard about from other people? Well, that was actually the case when it came to every celebrity, so that was a good point; there was no real sense to it.

Demyx was losing track of how his brain was working again and so decided, under strongly given advice from Zexion, to go get a book.

Ten minutes later and Demyx was crunching a large super-triple-chocolate-smartie-and-gummi-goodness cookie while reading Pride and Prejudice. Beside him, Zexion had abandoned his quote listing in favour of winching sharply every time one of the big chocolate-soaked crumbs fell from Demyx's mouth onto the pages. After enough twitching to be medically considered as having a fit, Zexion let out an agonised yelp and snatched the book from Demyx's hands, frantically dusting down the pages, each in turn, moaning whenever he saw some chocolate had melted into the text.

"It was a classic," he lamented. "A beautiful classic by an amazing woman, Ms Jane Austen, and you dropped _chocolate_ on it."

"You want one?" Demyx asked, seemingly oblivious to the his fellow Organisation member's pain, offering the bag of cookies to Zexion who glared at it as if it were a ticket to a Justin Beiber concert. Demyx simply finished the remains of his own cookie and helped himself to another, setting the now half-empty bag down in the ever enlarging pile of sweets, chocolates, crisps and candies he had been steadily forming since his arrival.

"Isn't there _anything_ you care about of _any_ substance!" Zexion snapped, scowling at the irrepressible 16-year-old beside him as if he was actually a hunched-back, hairy ape who had just started clubbing the diary of Anne Frank with a novelty banana.

"Give me a topic," Demyx replied, beginning to lament the book that had been teaching him the genteel elocution of the Queen's English.

"Very well, how about foreign diplomacy?"

Demyx looked at Zexion as if he had just coughed up something that had begun to move.

"No. Okay, how about economics?"

Demyx's head tilted from side to side like a bemused dog.

"Architecture, art, language, drama, philosophy? _Anything_?"

"Zexion, I don't know anything about any of those."

"Then what the hell are you doing in a place of knowledge! Get out!"

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because I want to get to know you?"

"Why would you possibly wanted to do that?"

"I don't know."

"You don't know much! Now, you've met me! This is me, get out!"

"This isn't you."

"What do you mean "this isn't me"?"

"You're not being happy, and everyone can be happy so this isn't all of you, this is just one part of you. The part I think you want to show people so they'll leave you alone and that way, since you'll still be able to tell yourself that you can't be sure, you won't have to come to terms with the fact that you might not be able to feel anything even if you get close to someone since becoming a Nobody, because that would hurt even more than if you never got close to anyone in the first place."

Zexion was stunned, and as an emo, he did not allow himself to appear stunned except at _very_ unexpected occurrences. And this was one of them. This amount of insight and understanding into Zexion's most guarded thoughts coming from the most unlikely of sources; the undisputed lazy idiot of the Organisation.

"How could you possibly know that?"

"Because I feel the same way; I could be just like you, but I've chosen not to be. I went the other direction .I think we're two polar opposites, Zexion. You pushed everyone away who came too close; I embraced everyone around me even if I had to hunt them down to do it. And yeah, it hurts sometimes when I don't feel anything. It feels even worse later when I can't even feel sad about it, but I keep going back because occasionally I get moments when it doesn't feel so bad. When I feel a little something, a little glimmer, and that's how I know that we still have hearts. They may not be like the ones we had before, but they're still there. There's still something there."

Normally Zexion would have ridiculed him on the spot, told him of course they didn't have hearts. That all those glimmers Demyx thought he felt were just distant memories being superimposed by the brain over the empty void as a means to fill it with something and so allow the consciousness to cope with the realisation of loss the emptiness had left behind. Normally, he would have ripped Demyx apart and pointed out how every friendship he thought he had since becoming a Nobody, every glimmer, must feel the same, because the brain was just projecting the same thing over and over again, a continuous stream of copies. All fake.

But this time, something stopped Zexion's tongue. Demyx had done what no-one else had ever tried. Demyx hadn't left when Zexion had pushed him away, Demyx had taken a risk and told Zexion what he thought of him, and, perhaps most importantly, Demyx, for all his apparent idiocy, had been completely correct. And Zexion suddenly realised that he himself had been wrong and that there _was_ another person in the Organisation who knew exactly how he felt. He wasn't alone.


	3. Chapter 3

Once they had gotten all that messy jargon out of the way, something Demyx liked to think was possibly the worst icebreaker in the world (getting yelled at), things progressed quite smoothly. Zexion didn't really relax, but when he held himself tightly away from Demyx, he was actually looking at the other boy now rather than at anything except him.

Zexion still didn't smile, but the eyes had lost their hard glare.

He didn't laugh, but at least he didn't hurl insults with every other sentence.

In short, Zexion had unbolted one of the locks on the huge pair of doors he hid behind. Now the panels were parted just enough for Zexion to peek at the world outside the confines of his solitude, but in such a way that he left the gap small enough so it could still be shut and allow the boy to lock himself away again at a moment's notice.

To most people it would've been a volatile situation, but most people over-think things and care when someone doesn't respond when they try to be nice. Demyx wasn't like most people, he was an individual, granted everyone was an individual; but all too frequently people hide themselves away like Zexion, though not so often to Zexion's extreme. Demyx was a true dreamer, when he looked at Zexion, he didn't see him as he was now, he saw a future version who was happy to talk back to Demyx, to smile and not be so hard-stanced. He saw a person he could help become happy. The future Zexion would probably still be as stiff as a thick plank of wood suffering from rigamortis when it came to other people, but Demyx at least hoped that he'd be able to enjoy himself around him.

Naivety and hope. What really was the difference?


	4. Chapter 4

"Okay, so what do you think?" Demyx asked, settling the pair of spectacles across the bridge of his nose and picking up one of Zexion's large books, holding his pinkie up as he sipped tea and took on a deep and profound expression. He and Zexion had started a game (on Demyx's whim of course) during which they had switched drinks. Demyx now had a classical china cup of rishi tea, and Zexion had a large bunny mug of hot chocolate topped with three inches of whipped cream, chocolate sprinkles, a chocolate flake and a teddy-bear-shaped wafer.

"Congratulations, you now have the persona of someone who would be very assiduous," Zexion commented.

"I don't know what at _least_ two of those words mean."

"Some new things to add to your Dem Dem Dictionary then, aren't they?"

"Yeah! New Words! I'm going to be an author yet! By the way, I was thinking. I now have abooooout 33 words in my dictionary. If I give each word their own book, does that mean I've written 33 books?"

Zexion took a long gulp of hot chocolate, wiping the resulting moustache of cream away before he answered.

"Not conventionally, no, but it's an interesting thought I'll look into for you. I'm pretty sure you need a certain number of words or page length for something to be considered a true book."

"Yes, but one series of books counts each book individually. J K Rowling has written one Harry Potter Series, but she's still called an author of seven books from it, so if I market my one-word books as a single series, they'll have to count each book individually?"

Zexion rubbed his eyes and groaned, but the corner of his mouth was beginning to twitch up.

"You're outsmarting _me_; it's scary, take off those glasses." He reached for them.

"Nope! I look like you, so now you have to look like me, starting with your hair, let's give you a mullet."

"Woah, woah, woah, you never go near an emo's hair," Zexion said, blocking Demyx's hand with his own.

"Okay..." said Demyx, who, not to be perturbed by anything, began to look around for another option. He spotted one and picked up a huge, thick bar of chocolate, heavily loaded with a filling composed of every substance made collectively by the world's sweet companies. He held it out to Zexion.

"Take one big bite."

"Are you serious?"

"Yep! Not very like me, is it, being serious? I blame my spectacular spectacles."

Realising it was either this or allow Demyx to become his hairstylist, Zexion took the bar, unwrapped the top tinfoil and sunk his teeth into the outermost layer of dark chocolate, and then proceeded into the next layer of milk chocolate, white chocolate, nougat, and onwards. Crunching through and taking it into his buccal cavity for a good number of seconds before he swallowed. He paused and smacked his lips.

"I think somewhere my dentist is crying."

Demyx burst out laughing, falling completely off his chair to roll around on the floor.

"It wasn't that funny," Zexion commented, becoming annoyed again. "Stop being so happy."

"No, I'm not laughing at just that. I'm laughing at you too, Zexion! You're funny!"

Again. Again it had happened. Zexion had spent all the years since he had become a Nobody looking through books, isolating himself so no-one could get close and show him the true emptiness of his non-existence. He had spent hours, days even, on his own gathering knowledge so he could become second only to his former-mentor Vexen. But now, once again, it seemed that despite trying to gather everything he needed so he could understand this new world of non-life and so remove all surprises which could potentially hurt him, here he was again, with the idiot of the Organisation showing him that he still barely knew anything let alone everything. Demyx thought he was funny? How could anyone think that? What logical course could someone's brain take to lead them to that conclusion on Zexion's character? How could Demyx see things Zexion hadn't shown, how could he look at him and find things that Zexion hadn't put there?

"Zexion?"

Zexion turned from his musings and saw Demyx sitting cross-legged on the floor, looking up at him.

"Do you know what you are?" Demyx said, smiling that stupid broad smile as always, so full of warmth when all was supposed to be cold.

_Fine what am I? A freak, a loner, an egotist, a dwarf, a loser, a joy-wreaker, moody, selfish, nefarious?_

"Go on then. What? What am I?"

"A marshmallow."

_Seriously, what was with this guy?_

"How in any imaginable way am I like a marshmallow?"

"Because I like marshmallows."

What?

Demyx actually liked him?

Lies. Cruel, stupid lies from a cruel stupid person. An idiot, a complete idiot!

And yet looking at Demyx now, with his spiky mullet, his warm smile and his big wide blue eyes that showed not a single drop of trickery or deceit, but rather complete honesty, Zexion had to wonder, how, how could someone sincerely like him? He was a horrible person, he knew it, he knew it more than he knew anything given to him or spoken to him or hinted at him. He knew himself better than anybody, he knew every fact about himself better than any fact he had read in a book, he knew what he was and what he was couldn't be liked. He was useless and worthless and nothing, he didn't even exist, but even then, even in a group of people in the same position he was lower, he was weak and powerless and unnecessary. He shoved people away, he ran away from them and insulted them and looked down on them and yet... now, the person he had thought most stupid, the person he had looked down on the most, was telling him there was something in him worth liking? It didn't make any sense. What good had all his studying and reading and learning been only to bring him here, confused by his first true contact with someone since losing himself.

"TAG! You're it!"

Demyx poked him in the nose and took off into the shadows of the shelves.

"Tag! You're it!" the boy repeated, looking around the side of a bookcase before disappearing again.

"I'm going off to find To Kill a Mocking Bird and rewrite it so the bird doesn't die!" Demyx called sing-song as he moved further away into another section.

Zexion's initial response told him to remain seated and let Demyx come back with his tail between his legs, his ill-mannered foolishness clearly shown to be inferior to Zexion's calm and dignified exterior. But something had changed, and that notion was rejected in an instant. Keeping to himself hadn't protected him at all so screw protection!

Rising as quickly as Demyx had, Zexion chased after him through the shelves. It lasted in all for a good ten minutes or so, Demyx occasionally blew a raspberry before disappearing again into the gloom of the long ranks of literature, other times he appeared in front of Demyx then dropped to the floor and crawled under the shelves into the next section across.

Zexion was laughing, a notion for so long rendered as absurd and unnecessary. He was reliving a memory; he knew that, he wasn't really feeling anything. Even as he was running, in his mind's eye, he was running away from someone, not towards them. The shelves weren't lined with books, but were instead bright white aisles lined with conical flasks and scientific apparatus. He could almost hear the sound of Even's voice, shouting at the young Ienzo to slow down or he'd hurt himself. The sense of someone caring about him flooded out from the illusion and Zexion didn't mind that it was all fake. It felt real, and that's what counted.

Demyx was more real, and he was directly ahead, turning down an aisle which, unknowing to the mullet-brain, led to the exit. Zexion wouldn't let him get away now when he was so close to catching him and so threw up the imagery of a wall blocking off the passageway. When Demyx came up short after rounding the corner, thinking he had reached a dead-end, Zexion jumped on him in a moment, grabbing his wrists and pinning him to one of the real bookshelves on either side.

Demyx was laughing, he was fully enjoying the moment, the end after the thrill of the chase. Zexion envied whatever memory he was reliving, he was envious that Demyx believed the memory to be feeling and not just simulation.

Then Zexion stopped being envious, he stopped looking at himself and what he didn't have. He forgot about his needs, his problems, his wants, his transgressions, his aspirations, his lamentations, his self-pity and instead he looked at Demyx. All the text he had taken and stored away in his head from all the dictionaries and thesauruses he had spent hours scanning through in the dark melted away to leave but one single word, one adjective to describe everything he was feeling for the boy before him:

Beautiful.

And then, as if it were simply the next point along the path Zexion had never planned to take but which he was following in his mind, the momentum of his flight away from the dark confines he had built around him straining and breaking the shackles of his solitude as he ran towards the boy at the end.

As if nothing could've been more inevitable.

As if it was impossible that something so clear could have come as yet another shock.

Zexion's right hand moved upwards from Demyx's left wrist to his left hand. His black leather-bound palm slid over Demyx's and the fingers weaved themselves into the gaps between the other boy's digits.

Demyx stopped laughing, his eyes were searching Zexion's, looking for something in them that Demyx didn't know the name of. This was nothing new. It had taken Demyx three weeks and two stranglings from Saix to remember the name "blender". But this, this was different. This was something Demyx knew didn't have a name, it was just something that was there, something in Zexion's eyes, hidden deeper than the pupils, something inside his soul that was pulling him in, pulling his head forward to see if he could find whatever it was by getting a closer look. Zexion was doing the same; he was being pulled in, his face coming closer. The movements of each was hesitant and slow, subconscious telling them the thing they searched for didn't exist and yet at the same time refusing to give up hope it did.

They found it on each other's lips.


End file.
